


Projection Monitor

by LemonTeas



Category: Marvel (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Teddy is technically in here too but he's a supplement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 17:24:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13322946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LemonTeas/pseuds/LemonTeas
Summary: While waiting for America Chavez to tell Billy Kaplan that he created her life, I wrote Victor Borkowski telling him he saved his.❈"It seems that Anole is somewhat infatuated with the Young Avengers (New X-Men Vol 2 #34). He seems to know a lot about them and even threatened to join them (Young X-Men #7)."





	Projection Monitor

**Author's Note:**

> I love projection fanfiction. When Victor writes a letter to our shared favourite superhero, it's like *I'm* writing a letter to our shared favourite superhero.

As an X-Man, or an X-Men, as some people liked to say as a 50/50 on whether or not it was grammatically correct, punching an alternate universe counterpart of yourself where you’re a vampiric octopus with sparkles in your blood wasn’t the weirdest thing to happen to him so far. Hell, it wasn’t even going to make the top ten by the time Victor was 50. After all, if it wasn’t important to Captain America, it probably wasn’t important at all.

Even though his parents hadn’t tried to kill him (on one hand they didn’t talk anymore, on the other, smaller, more shameful hand he felt they’d be living a dream) he’d jumped at the chance to help the Young Avengers the same way a fourteen year old girl would slit throats to be the person who hands a water bottle to a 5SOS member. It was a lot more than that though: now Victor Borkowski had literally killed (an eight-legged vampire version of) himself for Billy Kaplan.

And now he stared at him, his face, Billy’s real face, his wrist within Victor’s hand, mouth open, mind completely blank and overthinking at the same time.

“Hi,” He said lamely, and he could tell from Billy’s completely confused expression that he couldn’t hear him over the music. His brain was still on overdrive and yet nothing would come out. “I’d really, uh, I’d really like to talk to you!”

Billy seemed to understand at least half of the sentence, and grinned before getting closer so they could hear each other. There was a comfort, at least, that he hadn’t been completely repelled by some green kid with a diseased limb.

Then he remembered who his boyfriend was and mentally slapped himself.

“Sorry!” Billy still had to shout over the music. O _h. Oh oh oh oh oh he’s talking to me. Really talking to me._ He felt like the aforementioned 14 year old boyband fan, but then again, it was the aforementioned more than that.

“I need to find my boyfriend right now, it’s really important! But, uh, thanks for helping out! You really-” He was cut off by the beat drop and subsequent cheering from the crowd. He looked over, back to Victor, smiled, and then took his phone out as Victor’s ears split.

Several wordless cues ensued, and Victor stared at the back of his idol as he walked away.

Later, after he’d been dragged back into the crowd by several different X-Students, after he’d showed off his climbing skills hoping to catch Striker’s eye, after the Young Avengers had left mysteriously and the Fanta supply was depleted, he’d sit down and stare at the newest string of numbers in his contacts while mutants and aliens and neithers got magic transports back to their relevant abodes.

He wondered what he should rename it to.

 _Wiccan_? No, that would be showing off, it felt too professional, impersonal and he wasn’t even sure if he went by that anymore.

 _Asgardian_ felt more like a joke than anything, which is why he changed it in the first place. He couldn’t call him _Billy_ if Billy didn’t even know Victor’s name. _Mr. Kaplan_ was just ridiculous for someone who was at most 3 years older than him. He quickly entertained _My Hero_ before blushing it out of existence and got annoyed at _Dude in cape, Young Avenger #1_ and _Cool costume_.

A while more passed as the message-less phone blurred in his eyesight. He should stop staring at screens for so long.

He tapped in _Guy from party_ and went to go home with Santo.

  


❈

  


Santo would have made fun of him for everything he was thinking while looking at the message screen he hadn’t come away from for thirty minutes. Billy, Wiccan, the Best Young Avenger, hadn’t texted him anything. That wasn’t surprising, he was too kind just for giving some strange kid his number.

 _Strange kid_ , he thought in a reprimanding tone. The Young Avengers had recruited every one of them, he was more than just some strange kid. _Have more confidence in yourself, or you’ll never get this done._

Santo would have made fun of him for thinking about writing a letter, but Santo was asleep and the party had ended at 1am so what more was an all-nighter going to do, anyway?

He locked his phone and went to his desk. He didn’t care about the noise he made, Santo wouldn’t be able to hear anything over his own snores.

The letters, because he knew he was going to scrap a thousand of these things, were going in the back of his Business notebook. He was planning to rip them up or burn them or get rid of them in some other dramatic way, but _just in case_ he forgot one, Northstar was the least likely to laugh at him for it.

He’d be hurt that _he_ wasn’t the subject, but he’d understand.

Victor picked up a black-inked pen and started writing.

  


❈

  


_Hi, it’s the green kid from the saving-the-universe afterparty. I know the X-Men aren’t really in your superhero scene, but if you’ve ever seen me on TV or something, it’d be by Anole. My real name’s Victor._

  


_I have a lot of gay role models like, in my vicinity. Northstar and Iceman - he hasn’t made it public yet but I think it’s okay for you to know - are always there for me, but they’re old and snarky as hell. They wouldn’t have seen anything that went on with Mother. Illinois was fine, too. Just fine. I don’t speak to anyone from there anymore. And I don’t even know how much of it is because I’m a gigantic bipedal gecko and how much of it is because I kept newspaper clippings of you and your green ‘companion’ on my wall._

  


_I wanted to keep this short, because there’s a draft in my notebook with like ten pages where I’m plotting the fall to capitalism through lesbian-and-dog-equality communes, but I kind of needed some backstory to say what I’ve been thinking since I saw you IRL for the first time. Not at the party, I mean when the Young Avengers called._

  


_I think you saved my life. I hope that when I was punching out The Mutant Centipede verisons of myself, I was returning the favour._

  


_Thanks._

  


❈

  


“I changed my mind. I want a big wedding.”

Teddy stared at Billy for a while, chip halfway to his mouth.

“You going to elaborate on that?”

“I... think... I just think it’d be best,” Billy replied before locking the phone he’d been so intensely staring at. Teddy had to wonder what sort of message he’d just been sent. “I know we haven’t even started planning yet, but Mom, not Wanda, told me we got engaged _way_ too young anyway.”

“How big are you thinking?”

Billy smiled at him.

“I want the wedding of the century.”

 


End file.
